Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Beauty & The Beast: Some Gave All - Nancy Holder

Beauty & The Beast: Some Gave All

Nancy Holder

Titan Books, May 26 2015, $14.95

www.titanbooks.com

ISBN: 9781783292202

As her relationship with J.T. Forbes teeters,
NYPD Captain Tess Vargas focuses on the mauled deaths of six people that appear
to be beast related. Tess’ lead detective
on the serial killings case Catherine Chandler accompanies her lover Dr. Vincent
Keller on a visit to dying Maurice Riley who recently buried his daughter
Roxanne Lafferty, Delta Force soldier who died in Afghanistan. While chatting with the grieving Maurice,
Tess contacts Cat to tell her to get to the scene of the seventh victim. Maurice shows the pair a letter he received
from the Freedom Fighters of New York that claims Roxanne is alive but
incarcerated by a nefarious group whose experiments changed her into a monster.

In the Bronx, Cat investigates the murder of
eight year old Aliyah Patel’s guardian Aunt Indira by a “monster” who invaded
their home. The traumatized child has
become mute and unable to cooperate. Cat
feels an affinity to the frightened tweener as she knows firsthand what she
child is going through. Vincent
personally knows what it feels like to turn into an out of control berserker
beast; speculating he asks his friend J.T. if he thought Lafferty is behind the
rage homicides.

The second Beauty and the Beast urban fantasy
mystery (see Vendetta) is an entertaining adaptation of the TV series in which
relationships and even somewhat the title characters’ adversaries take a back
seat to the investigations. The cases
engage the audience and the metamorphosis of veteran Keller, especially summed
up by a late threat, adds tension.